Story Highlights

President Obama has won swing state Nevada and its six electoral votes, adding to a victory that will send him to the White House for four more years.

Both Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney campaigned heavily in the swing state that went for the president by a surprising 12 percent points in 2008.

Obama made 10 trips to the state this year, and Republicans were no less visible. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was in Reno as late as Monday morning.

More than 6 of 10 Nevada voters said the economy was their No. 1 concern, based on NEP exit polls conducted Tuesday as Nevadans went to the polls to cast ballots in a closely watched presidential race.

The former mechanical systems worker has been unemployed for three years. He has three weeks left before his unemployment runs out. He's updating his skills to work in information technologies but no job prospects loom.

Even so, Abbott says he voted for Obama in Nevada, the state with the nation's worst unemployment rate and one of the states hardest hit by the historic collapse in home prices.

"Give the man a chance. Nobody is going to do anything in four years," says Abbott, who lives in the northern Nevada city of Reno.

Abbott, like more than half of Nevada voters, cast his ballot in the two week period leading up to the election when early and absentee voting was allowed in Nevada.

Still, a steady stream of voters headed to the polls Tuesday, as well. The economy was often top of mind.

While Nevada's unemployment rate, at 11.8% in September, has improved, voters say the economy is still far weaker than it was.

He employs 15 at his shoe store. Yet Robles, too, says he voted for Obama, adding that the president is not responsible for the worst of the economic crisis.

But A.J. Jotipra, 69, a retired IBM worker, says Obama has had his chance. Jotipra lost his Nevada home to foreclosure last year.

"The last four years, Obama has done nothing," Jotipra says.

Jotipra is one of the so-called "non-partisan" registered voters in Nevada that the Republicans needed to break heavily in favor of Romney for him to win Nevada, says Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada at Reno.

Democrats went into Tuesday's voting with 50,000 more Democrats who'd cast early votes than Republicans. But a good portion of the early votes were from those considered non-partisan, state election data show. Not all voters were expected to vote their party, either.

Mitt Romney his wife Ann are surrounded onstage by family members after Romney gave a concession speech early Wednesday at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. (Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY)

Alexander Andresian, center, weeps as President Obama is declared the winner on election night during the Nevada State Democratic Party gathering at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. (Photo: John Gurzinski, AP)

Bill Purcell votes at the Centerville Fire Station in Centerville, Idaho. The economy was his big concern as he cast his vote. "I think it needs to be overhauled. I think a new president would help," he says. (Photo: Katherine Jones, The Idaho Statesman via AP)

Sheresa Walker uses a flashlight as poll worker Lloyd Edwards assists before voting in a makeshift tent set up as a polling place at Scholars' Academy, PS 180, in the Rockaway neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo: Mario Tama ,Getty Images)

New York City firefighter Terence O'Donnell stands on sand among voting machines as he prepares to vote in a makeshift tent set up as a polling place at Scholars' Academy, PS 180, in the Rockaway neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York City. (Photo: Mario Tama, Getty Images)

Hundreds of people wait in line to vote at Green Run High School in Virginia Beach. Some people had to wait longer than four hours to cast their vote at the school. (Photo: Ross Taylor, The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., left, laughs as she joins her husband John Bessler, not shown, and daughter Abigail Klobuchar Bessler to cast her vote at the Marcy School in Minneapolis. (Photo: Elizabeth Flores, The Star Tribune via AP)

Assistant election officer Belinda Strickland, left, assists a voter who had a problem with a change of address at precinct 613 Westgate at Washington Mill Elementary School In Fairfax County, Va. (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP)

Evelyn Dennis prepares to hang an American flag as election workers set up voting booths at Memorial Elementary School on Nov. 6 in Little Ferry, N.J. The school is hosting all voting districts in the area because most of the town is still without power after Hurricane Sandy. (Photo: Julio Cortez, AP)

A clerk tabulates ballots at a polling station just after midnight on Nov. 6 in Dixville Notch, N.H., which bills itself as "First in the Nation" on Election Day. Each candidate received five votes, the first tie in Dixville Notch history. (Photo: Rogerio Barbosa, AFP/Getty Images)

Like this topic? You may also like these photo galleries:

Most of that 50,000 vote lead came from Clark County, home of Las Vegas and two-thirds of Nevada's electorate.

Jadie Pellegrino, 52, of Las Vegas, voted in her first presidential election ever. The poor economic conditions helped convince her to take part. She supported Romney.

"We just need a change," she says. "There's a lot of people homeless, struggling and out of work. I think more can be done with that."

In the other major statewide contest, Republican Sen. Dean Heller is headed back to the U.S. Senate for a six-year term of his own, after fending off seven-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley in a bitterly fought campaign.

Berkley conceded the razor-thin race early Wednesday, calling the election "challenging" but recalling for supporters in a Las Vegas Strip casino ballroom that her grandparents arrived as immigrants in the U.S. with no money, no skills and unable to speak English. But they had a dream that their children and their children's children would have a better life.

Heller planned to address reporters minutes later at another Strip casino.

The Heller-Berkley contest was a battle of contrasts, funded by some $17 million raised by the candidates and more than $20 million spent by outside interests.